British Shintaido

The brief

British Shintaido is the official organisation for the art of Shintaido in the UK. They approached us via a mutual friend in the music industry who is also an active member of the group, requiring a fresh rebuild of their outdated and incomplete website. The content already written was good but it needed to be presented in a new, contemporary format, not least to boost membership applications. Instructors also needed to be able update their own class pages easily.

The solution

Firstly an audit of the existing site was taken, the pages and content sitemapped into a logical user friendly structure and wireframes of each page template drawn up. A new website was then set up to reflect this more intuitive structure with engaging design using full width screen elements, and the site’s functionality was brought up to date with location mapping, photo galleries, clear call to action areas, embedding of social media and the membership sign up form made more accessible.

An events section and easier to read blog were also added, along with a consistent sidebar featuring crosslink panels linking to related information. Each page was carefully rewritten with one eye on SEO so that British Shintaido’s Google rankings would improve and potential members could easily and quickly access the information they needed.

The result

An immediate upturn in Google rankings and page visits pleased the client, as did the fresh new design and its mobile-friendliness. The addition of live mapping meant that classes around the UK were easy to locate, and more information provided about each class and instructor has seen a positive impact on attendance.

After a productive training session (a Sunday afternoon in an M4 motorway service area!) the instructors were very happy that they could maintain their own content areas, importantly being able to update important class information such as dates, locations and costs. Each instructor is also empowered to add to the blog posts.

Despite the site’s image-heavy design, page load times were decreased by using optimization and resource caching techniques.

Customer feedback

“Working with Maroon Balloon has been an absolute pleasure and I would not hesitate to use them again. They combine the two essential ingredients for any web designer: imaginative concepts for the overall design and a meticulous, almost nerdy attention to detail.”